“Of course not.”
Don’s interview with the police was set for Thursday morning at eleven-thirty. He was leaving the Ecology building on Wednesday around five P.M. when a girl approached him and said, “Could I speak to you, please?” She looked Oriental and sounded like a New Yorker. She was pretty, but solemn-faced.
“Have we met?” As he said it, he remembered who she was: the girl he had seen a few times in conversation with Meg. Once, Sarah had mentioned that she seemed to be watching them.
“I’m Nancy Lim, but you don’t know me. I’m majoring in math and I live in Gilmore Hall, where Meg Kellaway is.”
“So it’s about her.”
She nodded.
“What is this?” said Don. “Is she sending messengers now?”
“No. She didn’t ask me to see you. I came because some of us are very concerned about Meg. Did you know that she hasn’t left her room since the weekend? She won’t let anyone in. I have to talk to her through the door.”
“Is she ill?”
“Physically she’s okay, but she’s very frightened.”
“Frightened? Of what?”
“She won’t say. She just says she had a terrifying experience.”
He could understand that she had been upset at being left high and dry at the party, but he had tried to do it as gently as possible. To describe that as a terrifying experience was melodramatic, even by Meg’s standards. “I’m sorry. You think I’m responsible, is that it?”
“No. I asked Meg if you had behaved badly to her. She said it was something else. She keeps her light on all night, and she’s getting no sleep.”
“Maybe she needs a doctor.”
“We think she might talk to you.”
“That’s a little difficult. I’m trying to—”
“—cool her out? We know all about that. We don’t want to interfere. It’s just that none of us can get through to Meg. We’re frightened, too, Don. We think she may be going out of her mind.”
“Christ.” He thought back to Saturday. Had it been so traumatic? He remembered that his prime concern had been to ditch her so that he could be with Sarah. He had not discovered how she had got invited to the party till Sarah had told him. Meg had come thinking she was his personal guest.
“Will you come?”
“I’ll come, but I don’t know if it will help.”
When they got there, the door was locked.
“Meg, are you okay?” called Nancy.
No answer.
“Would you unlock the door, please? You have a visitor. It’s Don.”
They heard movements inside the room.
“Give her a moment to straighten up.” said Nancy.
The door opened enough for Meg to peer out. She was pale and her eyes were red-rimmed. “Don?”
“I heard you weren’t feeling so hot. Nancy suggested I might be able to help.”
“You can come in.”
She was wearing pajamas under a bathrobe. The room was devoid of furniture except for a bed, positioned in the center. She sat on it with her feet up. “There’s a chair in the closet if you want to sit down.”
He went to look. The closet was stuffed with items that must have furnished the room — pictures, books, two chairs, a tray, her desk. Even the curtains had been taken down and put there. He retrieved a chair.
“Don, I’m glad you came, so I can do some explaining.”
He tried to be casual. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“I don’t mean this. I mean at the party. I didn’t understand at the time. You must have thought I crashed it. You see, I had this invitation.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “I heard about it.”
“She sent it.”
“Yes. And you thought it came from me. I can see that I upset you badly. Like you, I didn’t know about the invite.”
“That isn’t what frightened me. It was something that happened later, when I was on my way home.” She described her discovery of the jacket and the dead spider outside the gym. “It was enormous, Don.” She shuddered and closed her eyes. “You remember how even the smallest spiders scare me.”
He couldn’t make sense of what she had described. “Are you sure of this, Meg? I mean, you’ve obviously been through a bad time. You don’t think you could have imagined it?”
She said adamantly, “It happened.”
“I don’t disbelieve you, but shadows at night can do the strangest things, and if you’re predisposed to be afraid of spiders, your eyes could make something out of some quite innocuous object. It’s happened to all of us at one time or another.”
“I tell you I saw the jacket she was wearing and I saw a dead spider the size of a tarantula. I know it doesn’t make sense and I’ve been over it so many times trying to account for it, but I’m certain of what I saw.”
“Why would she take off her jacket?”
“It was outside the gym. If she had taken it into her head to climb on that web thing...”
Was it possible Meg had not been told about Rick Saville’s death? If so, it was better she didn’t hear about it at this stage. But Don’s brain pounded with possibilities. This story had to be the product of Meg’s imagination. It was positively dangerous. If the police were led to believe Sarah’s jacket had been seen outside the gym, they could draw really ugly conclusions.
“Don, has anything happened to her?”
“No, she’s okay. It’s you we have to worry about. Whatever happened, you had a bad shock.”
“I need to know what happened, and why. If I could have it explained, I might get over this. As it is, I’m seeing spiders everywhere I look. I can’t bear to pick anything up because of what might be underneath.”
“It’s your imagination, Meg.”
“It wasn’t on Saturday.”
“It must have been.”
“Would you do something for me? Check the lab to see if any of the big spiders are missing. If one is gone, we’ll know it really happened. Please.”
He gave a shrug. “If it will make you feel better.”
“You will let me know?”
“Sure. Now, will you do something for me?” He opened the closet door and took a pair of jeans off a hanger. “Put these over those pajamas and walk down with me as far as the door. You can’t stay in here forever.”
“You’ll hold my hand?”
“Of course.”
She took the jeans and put them on.
It was after seven in the evening when he entered the lab. He told himself he was doing this for Meg’s peace of mind, but his heartbeat betrayed fears he would not yet admit to himself. He went straight to the cases at the far end containing the mygalomorphs. There were just five to check. If one had been missing since Saturday, it was possible that its disappearance would not be noticed, because they nested in tubes of silk out of sight under stones at the bottom of the case.
He saw at once that Pelé’s food supply had not been touched, which was unusual for a spider that had long since gone through its full quota of molts. He lifted the lid and carefully raised the main stone that covered the nest. There was no spider.
Someone had taken Pelé from the case. There were not many people at the university capable of doing that.
He put the lid down and returned the lab key to the office. Then he walked quickly to the gym.
Somewhere on the lawn outside, Meg had found the spider under the jacket. Later, when Holland, the security man, had met Sarah at the door of the gym, she had been dressed, and she had shown him Saville’s body. What had happened to the body of the spider?
Along the gym wall was a flower bed with various shrubs. He took a stick and started lifting the branches and probing the foliage. The light was poor now and he had to go in close to see anything at all.